The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is Clueless

 

When it came to financial failure, there was no one in Washington – or on earth – who had masterminded more disastrous policies or produced more erroneous forecasts than Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Had he been an imperial soothsayer in a medieval court he would have lost his head or, at best, he’d be rotting in a dungeon.

Instead, with real estate home prices plunging more sharply than they did during the Great Depression, with unemployment intractable and rising, retail sales softening, consumer confidence sinking and the equity markets falling, Ben “He of Short Sight” Bernanke finally saw what we and a few others had been screaming about for over four years:

Economic Trouble Puzzles Fed Chief Too

The economy’s continuing struggles aren’t just confounding ordinary Americans. They’ve also stumped the head of the Federal Reserve. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told reporters Wednesday that the central bank had been caught off guard by recent signs of deterioration in the economy. And he said the troubles could continue into next year.

“We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting,” Bernanke said. He said the weak housing market and problems in the banking system might be “more persistent than we thought.”

It was the Fed chief’s most explicit warning yet that the economy will face serious challenges next year. For several months, he had said the factors working against economic growth appeared to be “transitory.”

The Fed’s statement Wednesday stood in contrast to the Fed’s more upbeat view when officials last met, eight weeks ago. At that time, the central bank said the job market was gradually improving. (AP, 22 June 2011)

But instead of headlines blaring, “Fed Chief Batting Zero Fails Again” or “Bumbling Bernanke Baffled by Bad News” or “Wrong Again Ben – Only an Imbecile Would Still Take You Seriously,” the media played it with a straight face.

A Presstitute is a Presstitute is a Presstitute. ABC, CBS, CNN, AP, BBC, PBS; reporters and journalists massage the egos of the rich, powerful and famous, while reducing the rest of the population to a mass of lower beings barely capable of tying their shoes, incapable of having an original thought, and lost without direction from higher authorities.

It made perfect media sense that the “economy’s continuing struggles” would confound “ordinary Americans,” but that the non-recovery had also stumped the head of the Federal Reserve … that was newsworthy. After all, if Bernanke was “caught off guard by recent signs of deterioration in the economy” how could lesser beings expect to be unstumped?

The bland journalistic language conceals a shrieking message: “troubles could continue into next year … We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting … more persistent than we thought … factors working against economic growth appeared to be transitory … economy will face serious challenges next year … in contrast to the Fed’s more upbeat view when officials last met, eight weeks ago.”

What this story is saying, without saying it, is that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is clueless and, by extension, so is everyone else in charge. The real story should have read, “Fed & White House Fail Again… they didn’t see it coming, and once it came the measures they took to fix it didn’t work.”

When we said that the Fed’s financial policies and Washington’s fiscal policies would serve only to devalue the dollar and do next to nothing to regenerate the economy, some, such as Fox’s phony-liberal, Wimpocrat, Obamapologist Alan Colmes, dismissed us as “alarmists,” and others ignored us.

But when Alan Greenspan, the cheap money chief engineer and mastermind behind the ruinous policies that would culminate in the Great Recession, belatedly acknowledged what we had been saying for years, the media minions treated his proclamation with the respect due a Papal encyclical:

Fed’s Massive Stimulus Had Little Impact: Greenspan

The Federal Reserve’s massive stimulus program had little impact on the U.S. economy besides weakening the dollar and helping US exports, Federal Reserve Governor Alan Greenspan told CNBC Thursday.

In a blunt critique of his successor, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Greenspan said the $2 trillion in quantitative easing over the past two years had done little to loosen credit and boost the economy.

“There is no evidence that huge inflow of money into the system basically worked,” Greenspan said in a live interview.

Greenspan said he “would be surprised if there was a QE3” because it would “continue erosion of the dollar.” (CNBC, 30 June 2011)

The unholy alliance between Washington and Wall Street proved how fixed the game was, and how far it extended; and when the layers of fraud and corruption were peeled back, why and how those four simple words, “too big to fail” destroyed the American dream. Monumental failures were rewarded with bonanzas of billions while the rest of the nation was left to make it on their own.

Regards,

Gerald Celente
for The Daily Reckoning

[Editor's Note: The above essay is excerpted from The Trends Journal, which is published by Gerald Celente. The Trends Journal distills the ongoing research of The Trends Research Institute into a concise, readily accessible form. Click here to learn more about and subscribe to The Trends Journal.]

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